TOMB OF A DIVER

It seems difficult to dive into a tomb. This is probably what a certain tourist thought when he was walking in the fields near the famous archaeological park in Paestum in southern Italy, where he tripped and his foot sank into an inconspicuous hole that turned out to be the entrance to a previously undiscovered chamber. I try to imagine Paweł Zięba, 27, sealed in a tomb whose walls are made of canvases he has nailed together himself, arranged so that each one faces him. The artist, although still full of vitality, is waiting for the inevitable, painting the afterlife for himself. Oneiric, full of symbols, as illegible and inaccessible at first glance as those in the paintings in the diver's crypt discovered in 1968. We will not find here more or less true scenes from life, worthy of being carved in marble or painted on canvas. If Zięba is building himself a tomb, the scenes depicted therein do not tell the story of what has already happened. It is a monument to an unknown course of future events, the vision of which can be so exciting that it always ends in terror.

Text: Filip Rybkowski

artist:

25.02.2023 - 11.03.2023 Szaber, Cracow